Review of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo
WARNING - SPOILER IMMINENT. There is not a fine line between subtlety and senselessness. As with, there is an unmistakable difference between directing styles that allow an open interpretation with one that leaves the audience clueless. Q will leave you mostly clueless. It takes the questions posed in 2.0 and further complicates it, with new questions thrown at you along the way, without possibly having an answer. Evangelion as a whole have always been this way, but Q takes it up, more than just a notch. I would like first to establish, from my point of view, what Q is and what Q is not: 1. Q isan alternate version of Episode 24, heavily altered and expanded. It is in all its glory, a psychoanalytic journey that dissects Ikari Shinji who is thrown into a world he no longer knows; every single person he cares about either bore a grudge on him or no longer care about him, for reasons unknown.
2. Q is a dialogue that is character driven. There is a plot but it hardly moves, significant in the big picture only because Gendo said what can be summed up as “JUST AS PLANNED”.
3. Q is not the answer to your questions. That much is obvious without even watching it.
4. Q is not overly complex. It is not “2deep4u”; it simply offers no explanation for a lot of things.
5. Q is not a standalone movie. While the idea that you should wait for 4.0 before giving a verdict is ridiculous, you should not judge it after watching it just once.
Now, let’s get to business.
“Ikari Shinji is awakened by WILLE, an organization that is aimed to defeat Nerv, led by Makoto Katsuragi and most of the staff that once worked for Nerv. He however, is treated with disdain by WILLE and even by Katsuragi, much to his confusion. Rei is nowhere to be found. While Shinji is forced to deal with the seemingly unjustified hatred aimed towards him, Nerv attacks WILLE and Shinji bears witness to a situation that further complexes his confusion.”
Q presents a rather extreme departure from what our common sense has led us to believe from the events in 2.0. The fact that Third impact in Q is not at all what we saw in 2.0 (to what is able of us) is the defining element of Q. It is frustrating how Anno chooses to justify this simply using a time skip, forcing us to fill in the blanks with assumptions without evidence.
Instead of relieving our questions since the 2009 premiere, Anno chose to dump even more of them. New Angels dubbed as the “Nemesis Series” with markedly different properties, how Eva 01 ended up in the Tesseract, a monologue by Kaworu that defies human understanding. Those are some among the many questions that begs answer you can’t possibly find before 4.0. And not just that; 4.0 might not even have an answer.
Like said before, 3.0 offers little in terms of plot progression since it is based on Ep 24; altered and lengthened whereas the previous movies although different from the series, still borrows elements than spanned several episodes. The only significance Q has in terms of plot is remarked by Gendo near the end, and is enigmatic at best.
We were also fooled by the preview for Q in 2.0, which is also something I am not a fan of. It also devalues the preview in Q itself. To me this is obviously trolling on Anno’s part.
But Q is not at all bad. No, I’m going to level with you here; Q is excellent.
If you’re one of those people who wanted an objective movie, steer clear. This is not for you. In fact, if you want an objective ending, Evangelion as a whole is not for you. Evangelion is not a lovey-dovey, heartwarming slice-of-life comedy moestory that is so laden nowadays, and Q is Evangelion with schizophrenia on LSD wielding a baseball bat on a Pterodactyl. When you see it, you won’t know what to make of it. If you liked 2.0 just because of the last scene where Shinji mans up and became God while trying to save Ayanami, you will be equally disappointed. Evangelion is depressing, cryptic, cynical, enraging and unresolvable, and I want it to stay that way.
What is Q about?
Q is about understanding a boy who is thrown into circumstances he couldn’t possibly have known. A boy who is hated for doing something he believed was right, with consequence nobody could’ve known. A boy who almost destroyed the human species unknowingly while trying to save a girl, how he copes with hatred and disdain he did not deserve, how he realized the girl is not saved, and how these piling burdens drive the dynamics of Shinji-Kaworu, who is the only person that consoled him and offers him the hope of salvation. Basically, Q is a story of teenage angst, times a billion. Q is about doing something right the only way you know how to, only to be blamed for it. Q is about Anno.
And I love it.
I was thrown into a movie without possibly understanding a significant part of it, yet this weakness fades in the face of Shinji’s struggle for salvation.
Up till know, I’ve watched the movie 3 times. I’ve referred to wikis, to /a/, to forums, so on and so forth. I’ve spent days looking up for plot weaknesses, analyzing them and discussing them. Plotholes remain plotholes but some things are to me debatable, and I have no qualms with the directing decision to opt them. An example would be about WILLE’s refusal to explain to Shinji about what he had caused; it is unnatural to act like WILLE had acted in this regard, but it is not impossible. The rationale is simply its function to drive the story the way Anno had intended; it is to me, a forgivable flaw.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all three times, each more than the previous. I am well aware of the fact that unless 4.0 is 3 hours long, Anno could not possibly answer all the stacked up question; what actually happened in the Near-Third Impact, “The vessel of Adams”, Kaworu’s senseless monologue, and is the Rei in Q the same Rei he thought he saved (which can explain the telepathy and Q-Rei’s self-hallucination). But he doesn’t have to either. In fact, I would prefer that he’ll just disregard the smaller questions and only go to those that have a major impact (some mentioned just now).
It should be of no surprise if Q serves mainly as a preparation for 4.0. I would say that I am left wanting for more and now my head may probably explode due to the pent-up hunger for answers. But at the end of it, I am extremely pleased with Q. I hope Anno would continue to expand his idea and I hope that 4.0 will be amazing. I wish to Anno, good luck and all the best, only wanting him to know that he has created something truly unique and personal, even if it was just expanding from his oldl idea.
Not everyone likes Evangelion, and not everyone likes Q. But for those of you who do, don’t let what others say affect you.